Roll the Bones

Starquest

By John M. Ford

15 Aug, 2021

**Because My Tears Are Delicious To You**

10 comments

Support me with a Patreon monthly subscription! — 15 Aug, 2021

**Because My Tears Are Delicious To You**

10 comments

John M. Ford’s science fantasy Starquest is an extremely early roleplaying game, found only in the pages of the July 1979 Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine¹. The game was presented within an article titled On Evenings Beyond the Fields We Know, which as you all know was my introduction to the very concept of roleplaying games (which Mr. Ford for some reason called “rôle-playing games”).

The article begins with thumbnail descriptions of the bare concepts of roleplaying games, necessary because in 1979 RPGs were an extremely niche interest with which Ford could not assume his readers were familiar. Indeed, the assumption of the piece is that they were not (there’s even a passing explanation of dice in shapes aside from the familiar six-sided dice). Ford being Ford, he then illustrates the concepts by providing examples from a roleplaying game created from scratch, Starquest.

Starquest uses character classes — professions, more or less — and levels, in which expertise increases in defined increments. Using a sample character sheet as his guide, Ford outlines how characteristics (which he calls requisites) work, then guides the reader through the creation of a sample character. Ford briefly outlines the stock universe (conveniently divided between worlds with magic and worlds where science rules) before providing a sample of play.

~oOo~

George Barr’s illustration is so well-done that it might have given readers wildly optimistic expectations regarding RPG art of the era. In practice, companies operated on shoestring finances, art budgets were limited, and companies were perfectly happy to go with whoever in their circle could draw a bit.

Persons familiar with the state of roleplaying games forty-odd years ago (such as yours truly) will be able to make educated guesses from the game design as to what games Ford had encountered at this point. I am sure Dungeons and Dragons must have played a role in the genesis of this work, as did Travellerand The Fantasy Trip.

But so much for my educated game palate. I wouldn’t have to speculate, because the article ends with a list of game companies and their roleplaying games².

Ford’s exemplar is almost a functional roleplaying game. Certain important charts are mentioned but not provided. Ford being Ford, I am certain the charts existed. I’d be very interested to know if copies survive. Without them, however, the game probably cannot be played. The utility of character levels is unclear to me, but then, I think that about most games that use them.

Playability was not an issue for me when I encountered the essay. The fact Ford let the SF potatoes touch the fantasy peas was a shock. The whole idea of a setting that could be used for either seemed … untidy to me. Thus, I set roleplaying aside until I happened to encounter it again in university, which (in addition to forays into this whole “dating” thing) effectively torpedoed my academic career. Ah, well. But at least it was not John M. Ford’s fault.

If you want a copy of Starquest, you are going to have to track down a copy of the July 1979 Asimov’s.

1: Not to be confused with the Summer 1979 Asimov’s SF Adventure Magazine.

2: Arranged by publisher. Bolding indicates games I’ve never even heard of outside Ford’s essay.

Fantasy Games Unlimited: Archworld, Chivalry & Sorcery, Bunnies & Burrows
Flying Buffalo Incorporated: Tunnels & Trolls, Starfaring
Game Designers Workshop: Traveller
Heritage Models, Inc: The Emerald Tablet, John Carter of Mars, Star Trek
Lou Zocchi and Associates: Superhero 2044, Nuclear Survivors, Space Patrol
Metagaming: The Fantasy Trip, Melee, Wizard
TSR Games: Dungeons & Dragons, Empire of the Petal Throne, Gamma World, Metamorphosis Alpha.

In case the bolding is not visible for everyone, the games with which I am unfamiliar are: Archworld, Starfaring, The Emerald Tablet, and Nuclear Survivors.

Comments

David Vaughan

Hmm. My subscription to Asimov started after that, probably 1980 or 81. Interesting that they published it, though. Some of my favorite things in Asimov's were non-story items like that. Martin Gardner's column was often the first thing I read.

Jim Lai

I wonder if the game was deliberately left incomplete. There would be precedent for an incomplete game with partial examples of play in Herman Hesse's The Glass Bead Game.

Adina Adler

I see no bolding in the list of games. Also there are spaces before all of the commas.

James NicollAdina Adler

I can see bolding but I've added a list of unfamiliar games. I see the spaces as well but they are not there when I go into edit mode.

Adina AdlerJames Nicoll

I can see the bolding if I know to look for it, but it's subtle. I tried inspecting the text, and I can see space-comma-space enclosed in double-quotes, which I did not know was a thing in HTML.

Dan Blum

I have owned Starfaring and The Emerald Tablet.

Starfaring is a deliberately silly game and somewhat slapdash about space travel and exploration 700 years in the future. It slightly pre-dated all other space-based RPGs but there is a reason people played Traveller and Space Opera and such in preference. A new edition was published in 2007 for reasons which escape me.

The Emerald Tablet is actually a set of miniature wargaming rules. However, it has a complex magic system with lots of charts and spell cards, which had obvious applicability to fantasy RPGs of the time. (The rules say the magic system "is based on the actual grimoires (magical texts) that guided medieval European thaumaturges.") It was published by Creative Wargames Workshop, not Heritage - I suspect Heritage distributed it. (Zocchi has similarly gotten publication credit over the years for lots of things he just distributed or sold in his catalogs, but he did publish Superhero 2044 and Space Patrol. No idea about Nuclear Survivors as I've never heard of it.)

Dan Blum

Nuclear Survivors was another game by Donald Saxman, designer of Superhero 2044. I see this:

After Superhero 2044 Saxman created another post-nuclear war RPG called Ruinwar 90 -- a plot line so nice he used and sold it twice to Lou Zocchi. Gamescience was going to market the game as Nuclear Survivors, but killed project in the late stages of development.

However, I also see an interview with Saxman in which he says:

I wrote it as “Ruin War 90” and sold it to Gamescience, and it was published in a very short run as “Nuclear Survivors.”

Which doesn't mean they ever did actually publish it. I don't see any mention of actual copies even on collectors' sites so I suspect it was not published.

Dan Blum

I had forgotten that I had copied the text from the beginning of Superhero '44, the original self-published (i.e., run off at the copy shop) version of Superhero 2044:

By Donald Saxman based on an idea supplied by Mike Ford

The author wishes to thank Geneva Spencer
                            Mike Ford
                            John Railing
                            Aaron Giles
                            Eric Brewer
                            Dan Fox
                            Guy McLimore
                            Samanda Jeude
and the other members of the Indiana University Science Fiction Club who helped playtest Superhero 44 for their suggestions, comments and time.

(Ford has artwork credits but I am not going to reproduce all of those.)

Superhero '44 traces its origins to a concept developed by Mike Ford, one of Bloomington, Indiana's more imaginative personalities. His many and varied pursuits include Treasurer of the Indiana University Science Fiction Club, Herald for the local chapter of the Society for Creative Anachronism, member of the Conflict/Simulation Club and Dungeonmaster. He still finds time to pursue a career as a science fiction writer and reviewer.

His "Medieval" fantasy campaigns are as varied as his activities. The participants often find themselves armed with assault rifles instead of swords and fighting helicopters instead of dragons. One campaign featured a device which allowed the players to travel to over two dozen alternate universes, each with its own natural laws and historical motif. There was a world based on Space Opera, one where World War II was still in progress, one based on Edgar Rice Burrough's Mars, and, almost as an afterthought, one populated with comic-book and pulp-novel characters. Here the party of magicians and swordsmen met Batman and Doc Savage, and ultimately fought Doctor Doom and Darkseid with the help of Luke Cage and the Phantom Stranger. The major problem wsa the total lack of rules for these characters. Tanks and infantry, magic, dinosaurs, science fiction, the old west and even Mars can be found in conflict simulation rules -- sometimes in many sets of rules -- but comic-book rules are notably lacking.

As time went on, Mike adapted other sets of rules to fit comic superheroes and they became a standard feature of his various campaigns. The culmination of this was the infamous Multipolarity II battle, in which he refereed armies of magicians, starship troopers, Nazis, Klingons, Martians, apes and elements of the Legion of Superheroes. It was a complete success, and spurred me on to begin developing a set of superhero rules which could be played on their own.

The end result of over a year of testing and design is Superhero '44 -- the game of crime fighting and superheroics in the year 2044. The world of Inguria is intended to act as an initial backdrop for the action of the heroes. It includes features gleaned from pulp magazines, almost twenty years of comic books, and vintage radio shows. Superhero '44 can be easily adapted to a variety of environments including various alternate futures, the present, or even the Golden Age of the Thirties and Forties without substantial revision. As the players create superheroes, begin to patrol, cross over, and interact, they can expand off the island to combat evil in its infinite and varied forms. The scope of Superhero '44 is limited only by the ingenuity of the referee and the imagination of the players.

Dan BlumDan Blum

Now that I check, I see that this also appears in Zocchi's edition of the game, which seems to have just reproduced all the text with no editing: if there were editing one would think the interior title would have been changed to match the cover.

Colin Speirs

Archworld is a set of wargaming rules set in a fantasy Americas with North America covered in ice and chaos tribes, South America has a range of Cultures from Meso-Anerican to basically 17th C Wars of Religion, with 1970s Japanese-ish Hobgoblins and all sorts. Published by FGU, authora Mike and Sheila Gilbert had an idea to use it for fiction, but that never happened. I used it for a GURPS campaign circa 1990

The Emerald Tablet are a set of wargames rules too. Big selling point was vaguely medieval magic.

I have a blog about it here http://its-them.me.uk/salienthurcheon/?p=552